


The Martyrs Are the Lucky Ones

by Vongchild



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Semi-shippy, The Drift, Victory Tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vongchild/pseuds/Vongchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket go to Hiroshima. And other places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Martyrs Are the Lucky Ones

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been beta'd more than a quick read by Quigonejinn, whose sole contributions were to tell me I should post it and agreeing what the ending ought to be. All errors are my own.

When you drift with someone, you don’t need to talk. You just know. After victory celebrations in Tokyo, Mako takes Raleigh to Hiroshima, shows him the atomic dome, and says quietly that eighty years ago this was the only thing left standing. Raleigh nods and doesn’t know what she’s thinking about.

In Moscow, they meet a Russian pilot, old before her time with a tumor the size of a baseball growing out of her neck. She looks them over and says “at least you still have each other,” and shows them a picture of her sister. Mako shakes the woman’s hand and the three of them smile for the newspaperman’s camera.  While the photographer checks his screen, the woman repeats to Raleigh and Mako: _You are so, so lucky._

Raleigh swallows the knot in his throat, tells her: I know what it’s like to have someone die inside my head, too.

Jaeger pilots are oddities to the world they saved. Few pairs remain – there is no dignity in retirement. Jaeger pilots stop working when they become too injured to continue, or their partners die, and then they walk around like people missing half their hearts. Drifting _changes_ people. You can’t just fix it by plugging someone new in. Mako and Raleigh are the only pair left, two pilots with no kaiju to fight and no Jaeger to steer. Raleigh doesn’t know how Mako feels, but he doesn’t feel whole.

They try to talk about the breach, about being at the bottom of the ocean, about the hole in the earth that did not go into the earth. If there is a dead end in that conversation, they find it, sit in their hotel room in Sydney in silence and stare at each other. Where do they go from here? He’s been inside her head three times. He’s been inside his brother’s dozens of times. Without the drift, he has no way of knowing where to begin. He wonders if he should talk to her about Pentecost, but he was inside her head when the marshal died. He knows how that felt.

He asks, “Are you glad they’re gone?”

She says, “Yes, but -I don’t know what to do now.”

Raleigh thinks – _should I touch her_? He knows her body like he knows his own.

“Look,” says Mako, pointing towards the harbor. Raleigh follows the line of her arm. There’s a crane atop the sea wall. It’s coming down. He reaches over and squeezes her fingers.

From Sydney, the victory tour takes them to the Americas. Raleigh takes the window seat, and five hours into the flight, Mako climbs into his lap for a better view. She presses her forehead to the glass and looks down at the Pacific and goes so still and so quiet that he wonders if she’s fallen asleep. “I used to go to the beach with my parents,” she says, surprising him.

“I know,” he says. She has been there, so he has been there. There is no privacy between co-pilots.

“I know you know,” says Mako.

When they land in San Francisco, their tour guide drives them the long way around the bay so that they can see the wreckage of the Golden Gate Bridge. “Look,” says Mako, “Another crane.” Raleigh sees the span being lifted into place and squeezes her fingers. Mako smiles.

There is a ceremony at city hall, where the President thanks them for their service to humanity, and a banquet afterwards, which Raleigh thinks is ostentatious when so many people are still subject to rationing. He sits beside an economist who tells him the whole world has shifted now. Raleigh says, “I know, I was there,” and everyone thinks he’s being clever but really he just wants to get this over with and sulk in his hotel room.

When he gets out of the shower, Mako is sitting on his bed, wearing pajamas, her hair wet.

“What’s on your mind?” Raleigh asks her as he changes. He has a very strange standard of modesty in front of her, dresses quickly but with no worry for what does and doesn’t show. He doesn’t notice if she’s watching, but guesses she probably is. He knows she likes the way he looks, that she traces his scars with her eyes.

“This and that,” answers Mako. He sits down beside her. “They’ll get tired of showing us off eventually, won’t they?”

“Yeah,” says Raleigh.

“I know what you were thinking about the future when we went into the breach,” she says, and lies back against the bedspread.

“And what do you think about that?” Raleigh asks. He lies beside her. He thinks: it was easier to be his brother’s co-pilot. At least it was always clear what that relationship was meant to _be_.

“It’s nice to have a future at all,” she answers, maddeningly vague.

They sleep wrapped around each other that night, his fingers tangled in her hair, and in the early hours of the morning when he realizes they’re both awake, he tells her he misses the drift. “The martyrs are the lucky ones,” Raleigh says, and even in the dark he can see Mako’s frown.

“Don’t ever say that,” she says. “We’re alive and we won and that makes us fortunate.”

It’s a sunny day in Hiroshima, when they make it back again. Mako and Raleigh walk beside the Ota river, fingers locked and gaits matched. The skeletal dome casts a shadow across the promenade, and together as one, they stop right on the edge between light and dark and look up towards the ruined building.

Mako says quietly, as she has done before, that eighty years ago this was the only thing left standing. And Raleigh looks at her, and nods, and knows exactly what she’s thinking. 

 

 


End file.
